Home Fanfics Go Back
Maya didn’t know what to do. She left the dressing room on instinct, making her way to the exit as soon as she saw Claudine successfully get the camera turned off. She ran to the staff entrance, changing from the heels she had been wearing on the runway to her boots, and zipping her jacket over Kaoruko’s ‘Vivienne’ original dress. She didn’t have her phone, or her wallet, and to be honest, she didn’t much want to touch them right now, since they had been broadcast to the public. She didn’t even have the keys to her apartment, so if she managed to use a public phone to summon a ride, she couldn’t go home. In her jacket pocket, she found a face mask and a train pass.
The sun had set now, and she didn’t feel as visible as she often did in the daylight, so she put on the mask and made her way to the nearest station. It occurred to her to go back - to get her things, at least, even if she didn’t finish the rehearsal, but she kept walking forward. She wasn’t ready to face Claudine.
She entered the station, catching a west-bound train just before it left, and settled into a seat leaning against the window. One other passenger, an elderly woman, gave her a strange look - perhaps for her attire, but she ignored the gaze, staring out the window at the blur of lights in the underground tunnel instead.
Claudine. She had been frozen in a bizarre reversal of the incident at the coffee shop all those months ago, and Claudine had taken control. Claudine, who always told her to limit the access she gives to fans, who warned her to not be too trusting, had stopped the stream, had reclaimed a small bit of her privacy. Claudine, who had been hurt before and didn’t want the same for Maya, but Maya proceeded ahead, unheeding. She sighed, knowing truly that what happened couldn’t have been prevented by being more private, but still, she wondered if there were any warning signs, anything she could have done to prevent this outcome.
But as far as she could remember, there weren’t. Nakano-san wasn’t the most talented stylist she had, but she was perfectly sufficient. She easily memorized the outfit changes, helping Maya change with time to spare. The train came to the next station, the deceleration matching Maya’s plummeting blood pressure. The breaks squeaked. Nakano-san had touched her. She had seen her nearly naked. She… Maya took a deep breath, trying to keep herself from panicking. The train began to move again, and to help herself stay calm, Maya read the station names from the map on the traincar wall.
Ginza. Nihonbashi. Ueno.
Ueno… she was close to…
Maya lost her train of thought as she thought again of the stylist helping her dress, the stylist with her arm elbow-deep in Maya’s bag. The invasion she felt made her shudder, and she started to feel constricted on the train.
Ueno. Inaricho. Asakusa.
Asakusa. She was going home.
This thought alone helped her get through the rest of the train ride, and when she emerged from Asakusa station, she gulped lungfuls of fresh air in the cool, dark, drizzly spring night. This was the same neighborhood she walked through every day of high school. This was the place she lived before she became a model, before anyone knew who Tendo Maya was. She was safe here.
She didn’t think about where she was going as she walked down the alleys and side streets, avoiding puddles as she encountered them. She didn’t need to. Instead, her mind wandered to Claudine, as it always seemed to, and how she had spent years hiding out in Yokohama before returning to Tokyo, to HANA. Perhaps Maya could just stay here, in Asakusa, for as long as she needed to.
But the concept was laughable at best. She was in the middle of fashion week, in the middle of a contract, and her name was certainly trending at the moment on social media thanks to this incident. If anything, she was more famous than ever, completely unable to fade into obscurity. She had always entertained the idea of returning to the museum if modeling didn’t suit her, but that option seemed impossible now. Tendo Maya was a concept larger than herself. Tendo Maya did not entirely belong to her alone, anymore.
She found herself on the sidewalk before her childhood home, a moderately sized house built among Asakusa’s historic district. There was a workshop in the back - her father’s - but it was dark, and Maya realized it was rather late to be calling on her parents. But she rang the doorbell nonetheless, surprised to find her mother staring back at her when the door opened.
“Mom? What are you doing here?” she asked.
“What? Sarazashi has shows in Tokyo just like everyone else, of course I’m in town.”
“Where’s dad?”
“At the conference on ceramics he’s presenting at. It’s in Okinawa.”
Maya’s heart sank a bit as she realized her father wasn’t home. She realized she missed him - chatting with him about their shared interests, his encouraging and more gentle personality, compared to the severe temperament of her mother. “Why are you here?” her mother asked, as if on cue. She held the door open but did not yet step back to allow Maya entrance, instead surveying her on the stoop like a rain-soaked kitten. “What’s happened?” she asked, judging Maya’s pause too long.
“I - I left rehearsal,” Maya said, her words suddenly failing her. She internally berated herself for not practicing what she would say as she approached, so sure was she that her father would answer the door. It was never easy to think of the right thing to say to her mother. While she wasn’t as intimidating as Maya found her in her youth, it still seemed as impossible to please her or receive any of her love.
Her mother sighed, but opened the door wider, stepping back to let Maya in. Maya knew she was holding her tongue - she knew Maya had long memorized her tirades on how “hard work is the most important, do not shirk any of your responsibilities” - and therefore must have assessed that something out of the ordinary had happened. Not that it took much deduction - this was the first time Maya had come back to the family home since starting the contract - at night and in the rain, wearing an outfit from the runway, no less.
Uncomfortable in just the gown, Maya left her jacket on, kicking her shoes off and following her mother into the kitchen, where she put on some water for tea. It was quiet as Maya waited for the kettle to boil, and she thought of how many years she spent in this house - going back and forth from club meetings and school and trips to the theater with her father, all as her mother spent half the year in Kyoto to manage her company. Her mother was certainly part of the family, certainly present in this house, but not like her father was, which perhaps is why she felt guarded alone with her mother.
“Well, what’s going on?” her mother asked, as she poured two cups of tea. Her voice was detached and rational, but Maya could detect the note of curiosity beneath.
Several options pass through her mind, from ‘a fan snuck into my things’ to ‘my privacy was invaded’ to ‘I don’t understand when I’ll be good enough to be acknowledged by you’, but settled for “I was offered a contract with Seiran”. She knew this was not adequate to explain her arrival at the house straight from rehearsal, but her mother seemed to understand that this information would be withheld, as she raised her eyebrows in consideration to this admission.
“Oh? Have you decided about accepting it?” The question was neutral, not leaning towards Maya accepting or rejecting it, but she knew her mother long enough to know she always had an opinion, had an angle.
“Not yet. Do you think I should?” Maya asked, sipping the tea as she waited for her mother’s response. It was warm and familiar, the same tea they had had at the house for years.
“I don’t think you should be asking me,” her mother said, now sitting at the stool behind the kitchen island. Maya watched her - her body reflecting the same lines and angles as Maya’s, but now older, stiffer, more severe. It made her strangely sad, recognizing her mother as ‘old’. “Maya, you’ve been in the industry for a while now. You’ve done well, I think you are on the cusp of greatness. But you need to think about what your goals are. I will not always be available to advise you.”
Maya soothed the stinging in her throat by sipping more of the tea, unable to meet her mother’s eyes. She sat in silence for a few moments, surrounded by the strange sense of freedom and loss her mother’s words filled her with. What did Maya want? What were her goals? What would she do, free of expectations? “I suppose I’ll have to think on it more.”
Her mother nodded. “I think you’ve been doing well on the current contract, but so is everyone else this year. Yukishiro-san is stronger than ever, and even those girls at Frontier are making a splash, especially with Shizuha in the news.”
Maya nodded in acknowledgement, but she was barely listening. She thought of herself the previous summer, floating, detached, and all the lures that had been cast around her, pulling her back down to earth, into the deep sea. There was Karen, Kaoruko, Koharu, Mahiru. There were her fans. And then there was Claudine.
Maya’s mother’s cellphone rang and she answered it, her voice curt and businesslike. Maya suddenly wished she had her own cell phone, at least to reassure those at HANA that she was alright. “It’s for you,” her mother said, eyebrows raised in a knowing look, handing the phone to Maya. Maya took the phone and stood, but didn’t leave the room. She felt her hand trembling as she brought the phone to her ear. “Hello?” she asked, trying to sound as confident as possible.
“Maya!” The relieved voice of Claudine sounded from the line, and Maya couldn’t help herself from blushing at the sound. She turned away, unable to face her mother while she talked. “Are you alright? Where are you? We’ve been worried sick!”
“How did you…” she trailed off, wondering how Claudine came to call her mother.
“I called Yumeoji Fumi, who got your mother’s number from Tomoe Tamao. It was a shot in the dark, but I’m glad it worked! Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Maya confirmed, not wanting to reveal too much in front of her mother. She would be able to read about it all soon enough. “If you’re going back to the apartment, I can meet you there. I just didn’t have my keys.”
“Oh, yes, I was just about to leave. We finished rehearsal early, since Futaba and the others had to deal with… that incident. I’ll bring your things back with me.”
Maya pictured her bag and everything in it, broadcast live on social media. “Yes, thank you,” she said, her voice a little more choked than earlier. “I’ll head home now, then.”
She handed the phone back to her mother, who pocketed it, collecting the tea cups to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. “I guess I’ll see you again soon,” she said, walking to the front hall to put on her shoes. Knowing he wasn’t there, she glanced into the sitting room where her father liked to relax after work.
“Yes, I will be sure to catch your show before the season is over,” her mother said. “Take some time, don’t rush to any decisions. There could even be more options before the season is out.”
Maya nodded, closing the door quietly behind her. It no longer felt like her home, but that she was a guest visiting. It had stopped raining, and she walked back to the station in a trance, watching the way the city lights reflected in the puddles on the ground. The station was eerily quiet this late at night, but she wasn’t focused on whether or not she stood out in her gown and jacket, she was unable to focus on anything, really.
Once Maya transferred to the Uedo line to return home, she let her head rest against the window of the train car. She felt hollow, emptied out. She tried to imagine who she was after sacrificing the parts of herself that she had given to her fans, and who she was without the weight of her parents’ expectations. She felt woefully, painfully empty. Did she want success? Did she want to be a model? Did she want to study anthropology? Did she want anything at all, that wasn’t a projection of someone else’s expectations? It felt like every last piece of Tendo Maya was for someone else’s sake, but so deeply entwined that she wasn’t able to separate them easily. Where did she begin and others’ influence end?
She walked from the station to the apartment trying to shake off these lingering concerns, realizing only when she saw the overnight attendant in the lobby how late it was. She went upstairs in the elevator after being recognized by the desk attendant and opened the unlocked apartment door quietly so as not to wake Claudine, but she needn’t have worried because Claudine was awake and talking on the phone when she entered.
“Really? How do you know?” Claudine asked into the phone. She was leaning over the counter, rearranging the spice jars, and turned around as she heard Maya, a look of pure relief on her face. She gestured to the living room table, where Maya’s bag, wallet, and phone were laying. Maya nodded, mouthing a ‘thank you’ to Claudine, and went to investigate her things. “Oh, Michiru, of course,” Claudine continued. Maya figured she must be speaking with Tsuruhime Yachiyo. “But this is serious, though. Will we be required to testify?”
Maya couldn’t imagine what they were talking about, but assumed it was quite serious from what she overheard and the look on Claudine’s face. Figuring she’d wait until Claudine was off the phone, she went into the bathroom, suddenly desperate to remove the stolen dress and shower. She spent a long time in the shower, letting the hot water run over her until she had no thoughts. She shampooed her hair carefully, and scrubbed herself until she felt clean and prepared for the next day. She hadn’t checked her phone yet, certain that there would be all sorts of messages from Futaba about security, from Kaoruko about the changed plan without Maya’s head stylist, from Karen about social media concerns. But she didn’t have the energy to look at them, promising herself she would get up early the next day to review them. She stepped out of the bathroom in her usual pajamas, her hair still damp from her half-hearted blow drying, and walked back into the kitchen.
Claudine was sitting on the living room sofa, legs tucked under her, phone in her hands and a steaming cup of tea on the table beside her. Maya saw a second cup of tea on the kitchen counter and took it, moving to sit on the other end of the sofa. She felt that they should talk, though she wasn’t exactly able to figure out how to begin.
“I’m glad you’re home safe,” Claudine said, biting her lip in a way that showed she was still fraught over the whole experience. “I was worried.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you about-”
“Don’t even start,” Claudine said, shaking her head. “The way you interact with your fans has nothing to do with having one sneak into our show as staff. I mean… who could have predicted it?” Claudine turned away, sipping her tea. “Futaba is probably upset,” she added.
Maya nodded. “Thanks, then, for taking the lead back there.”
Claudine smiled, and it was radiant, despite the circumstances. “Of course. You’re my partner, it’s what we do.”
Maya nodded, both unsure if she would be able to do the same thing, had the roles been reversed, and unnerved by the use of ‘partner’. She wondered what Claudine’s definition of partner was. Coworkers? More than friends? Her mind returned again to the offer of a new contract, one without Claudine, and she shook the thought away. As she was right now, she couldn’t imagine it. “Who was on the phone?” she asked.
“Oh,” Claudine said, as if she had already forgotten. “It was Yukishiro-san, actually.”
Maya raised her eyebrows, but tried to school her face in a neutral expression. She wasn’t aware that Akira and Claudine were close, and wasn’t sure what the rising feeling in her chest about this revelation was, but it certainly wasn’t anything amicable.
“She told me Kirin’s case is being investigated by public prosecutors, who will be requesting he attend an interrogation tomorrow.”
“Oh. Wow.” Maya wanted to say more, but this late at night, after everything that had happened, she felt she was running pretty dry.
“Yeah. I’m not getting my hopes up, but it looks like the police and the prosecutor's office are actually taking things seriously, finally.”
“I hope it doesn’t interfere with our spring events.”
Claudine nodded. “It’s hard enough traveling to three countries in two weeks.” She took another sip of the tea, catching the time on the wall clock as she turned. “It’s this late already? We better sleep soon. God knows we won’t be able to after tomorrow’s show.”
Maya nodded, sipping the tea quickly. Claudine stood first, then turned around, leaning back over the couch to wrap Maya in an embrace. Maya was frozen, trapped between enjoying the closeness and feeling like she might cry against Claudine’s chest after so long of holding it back. “I’m glad you’re alright,” Claudine said quietly, her whisper right beside Maya’s ear. “You scared me.”
Before Maya could think of a response, Claudine released her, standing upright again. “Goodnight, Maya.”